Blake and Deborah in Europe: Lisbon, Portugal

Another rainy day in Lisbon didn't stop us from taking what turned out to be a very interesting 3-hour walking tour of the historic downtown area. According to our guide, the Lisbon metropolitan area comprises one quarter of the country's population and half the economy. It's one of the oldest cities in Europe with early roots in Greek, Roman, Visigoth, and Moorish civilizations. But Lisbon's glory days were in the 15th and 16th centuries when the likes of Vasco da Gama were discovering new trade routes to Africa, India, China, and Brazil. Lisbon got rich and, as rich people tend to do, they built lots of fancy buildings to show everybody how rich they were. But as the easy money rolled in from their far-flung colonies, their traditional economy languished. Thus began a long slow decline marked by a period of rule under Spain (1580-1640), a devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami and fire that destroyed most of the city in 1755, Napoleonic invasions, and the gradual loss of its colonies. From 1926 to 1974 Portugal was ruled by the dictator Antonio Salazar and his successors until the demoralized military leaders sided with a popular movement to oust his regime in a virtually bloodless coup that came to be known as the Carnation Revolution. Portugal has been a democracy ever since.

Lisbon is not a beautiful city. Not by a long shot. There's a lot of graffiti, a lot of vacant buildings, a lot of peeling paint and crumbling plaster. This isn't old world patina; this isn't shabby chic; this is just shabby. Deborah says the whole city could use a good power washing. The other problem is that much of the architecture in the heart of downtown is uninteresting, having been put up quickly after the 1755 earthquake following a uniformly bland military protocol prescribing a certain building height and lining up all the windows like little soldiers. Some building owners tried to dress up their exteriors with tile (the Portuguese LOVE their tile) but many of the tile patterns have the look of old, dated wallpaper. The people here are nice enough, and we are enjoying ourselves, but our initial impression of Lisbon's aesthetic qualities is less than stellar. The following shots are my best attempts to make Lisbon look photogenic.